Phoenixville student-athletes, marching band members likely to get phys ed credit

PHOENIXVILLE — The Phoenixville Area School Board is poised to approve new credit offerings Thursday that would count participation in Phoenixville Area High School’s marching band or any PIAA sport toward the district’s physical education requirements.

In last week’s board workshop, there was some animated discussion over whether a sport or marching band was the equivalent of what a student might learn in their physical education class.

“Physical activity and physical education are two different things,” said Betsy Ruch, a board member and former physical education teacher. “Physical education is called ‘education’ for a reason.”

Phoenixville Area School District students must earn a total of one full credit of physical education during their high school years to graduate. Under the plan put forth by the board’s curriculum committee, each PIAA sport or marching band activity a student participates in will be worth a quarter of a credit.

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For the year, a student can earn up to half a credit for those activities, meaning that a three-sport athlete would not be able to earn three-quarters of a credit in a single year.

Students will still need to earn their health credits in the traditional classes.

The measure passed through the curriculum committee with a 2-1 vote, with board members Jan Potts, the committee’s chairwoman, and Kevin Pattinson’s support. Ruch was the dissenting vote.

Ruch maintained that physical education classes expose students to different things they might miss out on if they were to just get credit for the sports they play.

“You are learning how to use your body in different ways,” Ruch said.

Ruch said that although she could play basketball when she was younger, she can’t anymore, but because of what she was exposed to in physical education, she is still able to remain physically active through sports like golf, pickle ball and archery.

Pattinson pointed out that student-athletes are not limited to the physical activity of their sport, usually.

“Our student-athletes today ... are not just focused on that sport,” he said. “They’re also required to do weight-training, they’re also required to do cardiovascular training. When you look at the majority of sports, whether you look at tennis, football, basketball, baseball, you are, for the most part, using the majority of the same muscle groups for those sports.”

“These student-athletes, they are learning to use the weight room, they are training cardiovascularly, so they are learning physical (skills),” Pattinson continued. “The only difference is they are not learning it from a physical education teacher. They’re getting it from a coach ... they are learning from that coach.”

Potts said the hours for practice in the sports and marching band Phoenixville offers “far outweighs” the time a student could spend in physical education.

The possibility of sustaining an injury in physical education class also might make only using a sport to cover that requirement might be appealing to athletes who are looking to really focus on their athletics, Pattinson said.

Ruch, who also said she played in a marching band, acknowledged the inherent physical effort that goes into being in a marching band, but said, like other sports, the lack of official physical education tied into it could not replace what students would get in a class.

Daniel Cushing, another member of the school board, said that he understood the physical education curriculum to be tied to the evolving skill sets of students as they grow up and move through the grades. If sports or marching band were to take over physical education classes, he’d like to see how the skills in each sport translate directly to what is taught in the classes.

“Where are we helping students build their neuro-pathways?” Cushing posed.

However, when asked whether the school board would like to see more data on what sports might fill all requirements and what requirements would need to be met to fulfill specific skills, Potts, Pattinson, Paul Slaninka, Kenneth Butera and David Ziev all indicated they would likely vote for the new credit offerings and don’t think that approach would be necessary to spend administration time on.

Using a sport or marching band to count as physical education would not go toward a student’s GPA under the curriculum committee’s plan. Ruch pointed out that taking a traditional physical education course is a “plus” for a student’s grades.

Superintendent Alan Fegley said that many of the students the administration talked to expressed that they would probably continue with physical education courses because they enjoyed them, even if they were student athletes.

Karlyn Small, the board’s junior class student representative and a tennis player, weighed in on the subject, saying that he saw both sides of the argument but felt most students would utilize the new offerings.

“As a student-athlete who puts in around 700 hours of tennis (per year), I will say that it is hard to have the academic (courses) that I want to,” while fitting in physical education courses, Small said. “I think it’s beneficial for kids putting in a lot of hours doing a specific sport, I think it’s very beneficial to them to have this option. If they want to be a student-athlete to the fullest, they need the options.”